


war room

by rillrill



Category: Parks and Recreation, Veep
Genre: Alternate Universe, American Politics, Crossover, Ensemble Cast, F/M, Gen, sex scandal
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-07-08
Updated: 2012-07-08
Packaged: 2017-11-09 10:15:36
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,571
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/454360
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rillrill/pseuds/rillrill
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"Sue, has the President called?" "About twenty times so far today." Assorted scenes from the second term of the Knope-Meyer administration.</p>
            </blockquote>





	war room

**Author's Note:**

> So, uh, this begged to be written what with [this GIF](http://24.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_m6tbkluzc31qebseoo1_500.gif) going around. I'm only giving the American people what they want.

So the thing is, it’s really fucking cold on the day of the second Knope-Meyer inauguration.

Seriously. It’s cold as balls. Amy’s pretty sure that if she had balls, they would be frozen completely off by this point. She’s aware this is history, blah blah blah, no one expected the two-woman ticket to be elected once, let alone twice, but after spending the past four years pretty much doing nothing, no one in their party is exactly feeling exalted to be here. They’re sitting around on the Capitol steps, which are packed to the fucking gills with spectators in “Knope We Can” gear, waving around signs and banners and shit, and their lips are all turning blue as they smile through Scotty McCreery warbling “My Country ‘Tis of Thee” accompanied by a cellist from the National Symphony Orchestra. 

 

~

 

The crowd cheers for a passing Trailways bus.

 

~

 

Selina takes the oath of office first, as is dictated, and there’s another musical performance. The thing is, from now until Sheryl Crow stops singing, she is the President of the United States.

Maybe she’ll do an encore.

 

~

 

Sheryl Crow sings one song and that’s it.

President Knope is sworn in, again, and whoop-de-fuckity-doo. Her inaugural address is so fucking long. Gary has to keep tapping Selina on the back of the neck to keep her from yawning, and Jesus, it’s cold out here, didn’t William Henry Harrison, like, _die_ because he gave a three-hour inauguration speech in the cold? Except President Knope’s people are always shoving vitamins down her throat so it’s not like she’s gonna be the one to get sick, it’d totally be Selina, and then House Speaker Ron Swanson is gonna get her job and run the whole fucking country into the ground by refusing to let the Senate get anything done and this is just fabulous. Just goddamn fabulous.

 

~

 

(The address isn’t really that long.)

 

~

 

“Madame President.”

“Ugh, I keep telling you, you don’t have to call me that! After four years, I think we should be on a first-name basis, Selina.” Andy, who is the best bodyman ever, hands her a cup of coffee, and she takes it, cups her hands around it gratefully. “Oh, God, thank you, Andy. God, it is freezing out there, right?” Her teeth were chattering during her speech even though she had those little hand warmers in her coat pockets and when she took out her phone to send the first official tweet of the second Knope term, her fingers were pretty much frozen solid and April had to hit the button for her. 

“It’s a chilly one,” Selina says.

“Anyway – we need to catch up. It’s just been run-run-run over here since Election Day – trying to firm up the rest of the new cabinet – ever since Brendanawicz decided to spend more time with his family, it’s been a nightmare trying to find a Secretary of Housing and Urban Development. He really threw us into a tailspin. Fucking Brendana-quits – oh, that’s his nickname around the Oval Office.” Leslie laughs a little. “But never mind that! Let’s save the work talk, you know?”

“I do –”

Andy taps the President on the shoulder and whispers something into her ear, and she jumps. “Oh, God, tell Justice Alito to hold on, I’m really not ready.” She pops up and smoothes a wrinkle from her skirt. “Anyway, Selina – I’ll be seeing you at the parties tonight, I’m sure.”

Selina nods. “Leslie. Mr. Wyatt.”

“Madame Vice President.” God, Ben is looking _fantastic_ in that suit. She’s gonna have so much secret second-inauguration sex with her Chief of Staff tonight.

 

~

 

Who the fuck forgets to bring Tic-Tacs to a fucking state dinner? Mike. Fucking Mike.

 

~

 

“Sue, has the President called?”

“About twenty times so far today.”

“ _Great._ ”

 

~

 

There are unwritten rules.

Like when Ben Wyatt’s office door is shut, you do not fucking disturb. The senior staffers all know this and try to warn everyone else that opening that door without express written permission is akin to whacking a beehive like a piñata.

In retrospect, maybe having April Ludgate-Dwyer as their last line of defense in this kind of delicate situation was kind of a bad idea.

In any case, it was probably only a matter of time before someone opened that door to find the President spooning with her Chief of Staff.

(“The weird thing is, he was the _little_ spoon,” Jonah says later.)

 

~

 

To: b.wyatt@gmail.com  
From: d.egan@gmail.com  
Subject: Congratulations!

When’s the wedding?

DE

 

~

 

To: d.egan@gmail.com  
From: b.wyatt@gmail.com  
Subject: Re: Congratulations!

I know about you and Amy. 

Let’s keep each other’s secrets, shall we?

BW

 

~

 

The thing about Congressional sex scandals is that they’re kind of awesome.

April and Tom forward Senator Dexhart’s dick pics to their entire address books. No one is less amused than Secretary of Health and Human Services Ann Perkins, who comes barreling out of a cabinet meeting to punch Tom hard on the arm.

“I’m pretty sure they’re fucking,” whispers Jonah to April.

April rolls her eyes. “Don’t you have a dick cake to eat, Jonah?”

“Real mature,” he sighs over his shoulder as he retreats.

 

~

 

Dan is combing the blogs, basically just on patrol duty, when he clicks on a link that seems mostly innocuous.

“The fuck is that?” says Amy behind him.

Dan blinks. “Apparently the POTUS’ Chief of Staff has a fan club. And they really liked those pictures of him on the beach in Hawaii.”

“What are they calling him – sexy hummingbird?”

“Apparently that’s his nom de plume around these parts.”

“Taut-bodied elf king? This is fucking amazing.”

“Don’t tell Selina –”

“Obviously. She’d probably stage her own bikini photo op just to snag a few more nicknames of her own.”

“Wyatt’s got a good body. Wonder what he does? P90X?”

Amy smirks. “You’d totally fuck him, huh?”

“So would you.”

“Well, duh.”

 

~

 

Leslie kills at the WHCD and so does the guest speaker, some guy from Saturday Night Live. Nice kid. Friendly.

On Monday morning their too-close handshake dominates the news cycle and Fox & Friends’ Joan Callamezzo is tearing their body language apart, because clearly that handshake means they’re fucking, right? 

(She gets in a dig about the veep’s awkwardly stained dress and “inability to get a man interested” as well, because Joan Callamezzo is nothing if not an equal-opportunity awful person.)

 

~

 

In his defense, Mike didn’t really notice that Selina had gotten a little bit of marinara sauce on her dress that night. He was just excited to meet Stephen Colbert.

 

~

 

“God, these fucking Fox jerks!” Leslie bangs her fist on a dresser drawer in the Lincoln bedroom. “It’s like they’re just _looking_ for awful things to say!”

Ben sighs as he loosens his tie and begins to unbutton his shirt. “Go easy on the furniture, Leslie,” he says wearily. “I know. Everyone sucks.”

“Ben, I’m sorry, but the fact that they haven’t caught onto us yet is kind of a miracle.”

“You left your BlackBerry on the bathroom counter.”

“Leave it there.”

“Chris might call –”

Leslie catches the end of his tie and pulls him to her, placing a finger to his lips before they meet. “I said to leave it,” she says, her voice low and authoritative.

Ben snickers. “As you wish, Madame President.”

“Say that again.”

“Madame President.”

“Fuck yeah.”

 

~

 

On the night the House passes healthcare reform (Rep. Maxine Waters, D-Calif., casts vote #218), the entire floor erupts in cheers and shouting.

Ron bangs his gavel twice.

 

~

 

“Oh, and Bruce Springsteen wrote a song for Knopecare,” Donna says as she hands over the last of Leslie’s memos. 

(Here’s the thing: Bruce Springsteen is essentially the Unofficial Presidential Troubadour of the Knope Administration. He’s already written like three songs. “Catch Your Dream” basically got them elected in the first place, so it’s not like they have any place to complain, but honestly, he’s starting to run out of things to rhyme with Knope.)

“Great,” says Leslie through a toothy smile.

 

~

 

On the afternoon that the Knope-Wyatt Oval Office Game of Thrones roleplaying sex scandal breaks, Selina is in the middle of a Clean Jobs headache in her office, spinning listlessly in her chair.

Amy taps on the door. “Um, you’re going to want to sit still for this,” she says uncertainly.

 

~

 

Ben Wyatt resigns, effective immediately.

They don’t really have any other choice but to bring in a new chief of staff. Someone dangerous. Someone they can trust to basically keep a knife up their sleeve and pull it on any intern who goes poking around where they shouldn’t be.

They go with the most obvious option. They get Jen Barkley.

 

~

 

The thing about Chris Traeger – the reason he’s the ultimate D.C. lifer – is that he’s really, really fucking good at his job. He’s an awesome White House spokesperson, all right?

“Mr. Traeger, don’t you think the reaction from the right to KhaleesiGate has been justified?”

Chris says something bland and non-reactionary about the American people and their voices and Jonah has to admit that his boss is really fucking good at this. He’s really fucking good at everything, honestly. Like, the other day he had to yell at his staff and Jonah wasn’t even aware that they were being reprimanded until the meeting was almost completely over.

Chris introduces the new chief of staff, Jennifer Barkley. Her sobriquet among the Beltway blogger set is “Barracuda Barkley” and she was once described as “Rahm Emanuel with tits” and if anyone can fix this tsunami of fuck deluging the POTUS, it’s Jen Barkley.

 

~

 

Leslie, for her part, has good people. When they find the intern who sent the tip to Gawker, she calls him in for a little chat.

“I’m furious,” Leslie says calmly. “And you’re going to have a little meeting now.”

Greg Pikitis almost breathes a sigh of relief. But then Leslie continues: “With Jen.”

When she closes the office door, leaving Pikitis to fend for himself, she raises her eyebrows and calls, “April, Ms. Barkley shouldn’t be long in there. Be ready to dispose of the remains.”

 

~

 

From the VP’s office, it’s pretty clear that, now than ever, the White House has been set into a tornado of fuck-it-all-to-hell.

Mike kicks up his legs on his desk and Dan clears his schedule for dinner someplace nice and Amy finally beats that hard level in Angry Birds Rio.

 

~

 

“Sue, did the President call?”

“No.”

 

~

 

“So what the fuck are we supposed to do now?”

Ben stares silently out the tinted window of the limo as the motorcade crawls down the street. “Get married?”

“Hilarious,” Leslie spits.

Ben glances at her sideways. “What if we did?”

“Are you – proposing?”

“No – no, I’m – I’m suggesting it. It could do wonders for your approval rating if we got married. I mean, even if it didn’t, you’re out of here in a little over two years anyway, so we wouldn’t have to even get it done before then. If we just got engaged, maybe it’d blow over.”

Leslie is silent, and then says, “This is not how I envisioned my career-ending sex scandal happening.”

“So is that a yes?”

“It’s a let-me-think-about-it.”

“I still love you.”

She smiles a little, mistily. “I love you, too. That’s why we’re in this mess in the first place.”

 

~

 

Ann Perkins testifies before Congress on behalf of Planned Parenthood. She gets kind of emotional. As anyone would.

The press tears her apart, of course. 

“President Knope, will you be replacing Dr. Perkins as Secretary of Health and Human Services following her outburst on the House floor yesterday afternoon?”

And Leslie rounds on the reporter, because that is not an appropriate question, and would you even be asking this if they weren’t both women? And honestly, the nerve!

“KNOPE: ‘OVARIES BEFORE BROVARIES’” reads the headline on HuffPo.

Rachel Maddow stands and salutes them both during her broadcast that night. On The Daily Show, Kristen Schaal does a little dance.

It’s kind of an awesome moment.

That night, “leslie knope ann perkins” and “leslie knope feminism” are two of the top searches on Google.

“leslie knope ben wyatt” barely makes the top ten.

 

~

 

Two days later, some Republican senator from Alabama is caught soliciting a “watersports professional” on Craigslist’s M4M section using his work email address.

Congressional sex scandals are kind of April’s thing, after all.

 

~

 

“So let’s talk about this clean jobs thing.”

Leslie’s forking away at a plateful of breakfast food and Selina’s politely taking small, measured bites of a bagel when in reality she kind of wants to hurl the fucking thing at the ceiling. She kind of hates bagels.

“Well,” Selina says, “it’d be great to finally get this thing through, considering that the press is pretty much completely consumed by Knopecare – great going, by the way –”

“Thanks,” Leslie says, waving her fork in a little circle. “But I mean, I don’t want a repeat of what happened last time we tried this – the oil guy, really?”

“Fuck, he was ex-oil.”

“Right, right, ex-oil – it’s the same difference to these people. To the right he’s too far left and to the left he’s too far right – you can’t win. Did I ever tell you about the time I accidentally gay married those two penguins?”

“Many times.”

“Same difference.”

“So here’s how I think we’re gonna play it. Don’t fuck around with oil at all. We’re gonna come at it sideways.”

“Meaning?”

“Ex-hydrofracking. Someone who’s been in the industry and has done a total 180. It’ll make the oil guy look like Al Gore and we can get the press off Knopecare for a few weeks, long enough to get it through the Senate. Then we take fracking off clean jobs and it’ll shoot through the house.”

“Go big or go home, huh?”

Selina smirks. Leslie offers a fist-bump. She reciprocates.

 

~

 

Basically, there is nothing not awesome about being in a lame duck administration. Particularly one who just passed health care reform in the wake of the biggest presidential sex scandal since Clinton-Lewinsky.

Leslie and Selina throw a pizza party for their senior staffers on midterm election night and invite most of the cabinet as well. It’s also kind of awesome. 

Tom and Ann are squabbling in a corner – “I disagree with his policy decisions and love of pork-barrel spending as much as the next person, but calling Mitch McConnell out on his ‘lack of swag’ is not a real argument!” – and Andy and Dan have both broken out their guitars to play Springsteen songs using all power chords and Jerry and Gary are deep in conversation over the Canadian bacon-and-pineapple pie and April looks like she’s bothering Sue. Amy is chatting with Ben about the relative merits of calzones and Ron is silently attacking an entire pie of his own as Jen Barkley and Chris Traeger flirt over their phones.

Selina sidles over to Leslie. “Two more years of this, huh?”

“Got any plans for 2016?” Leslie asks.

Selina shrugs. “Nothing concrete. Anything can happen, you know – might make another run for your job. Knock on wood and all.”

Leslie nods contemplatively. “You’d have my endorsement.”

 

~

 

They hold onto their majority in the Senate but lose the House.

There’s no crying in politics, though.

(And they can still totally get Clean Jobs through before the term’s up. They’ve got President Leslie Fucking Knope on their side, after all.)


End file.
